In this case it is not a murder on the Orient Express, but the murder on the Orient Express. And you don't need the expertise of detective Hercule Poirot to solve the mystery, because you know who the murderer is: everyone knows his name and it's Mr. Brexit.
The company that operates the venerable train, a symbol of when traveling was a pleasure and a romantic luxury instead of going like cattle on low-cost planes and queuing for hours at airports, has announced the suspension of the British sector of the route due to delays and bureaucratic obstacles that the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union implies.
In Agatha Christie's novel, Poirot is in Istanbul when he receives a telegram telling him to return to London as soon as possible, and he uses his influence with the director of the Compagnie International de Wagons-Lits to get a cabin (today he would be seen as nepotism and the detective would lose his hair). In the reality of 2023, the difficult thing is not getting to England, but getting out of it. With the country outside the EU, French and British border agents check all passports and there are huge queues at the Folkestone (Eurotunnel) and Dover (where the cross-Channel ferries depart from) checkpoints. At the beginning and end of the Easter holidays there have been fourteen-hour traffic jams. Like to go crazy.
The Belmond company, which operates the Venice and Simplon Orient Express (as well as another railway that runs through Peru) has completed the journey in art deco carriages from the thirties from London to Folkestone, where passengers were put on coaches to cross the Channel in the Eurotunnel to Calais, where they got back on the train to continue to Paris, Venice, Belgrade, Athens or Istanbul (price between four thousand and twelve thousand euros per head, depending on the final destination). The reason is that the delays for passport inspection do not correspond to the luxury business model. And that if there are already delays now, from next year they will be even worse with the imposition of the biometric passport, the taking of fingerprints, the application of facial recognition techniques and the need to fill out forms similar to the ESTA of United States, which replaces the tourist visa. The British will have to pay seven euros and provide the EU with their personal data (criminal record, profession, education, parents' names...), and Europeans more or less the same to the UK authorities. The technological revolution has made some things easier, but travel more cumbersome. When the Orient Express opened in the 19th century, a passport was an optional document, all you needed was the pamphlet with mainland timetables provided by the Thomas Cook agency, and messages were not sent to your mobile, but instead they had to be picked up personally at the American Express offices. Good 'ol times!
The Orient Express is not the only victim of Brexit and the British obsession with controlling its borders (through which, by the way, more and more illegal immigrants slip through). The Eurostar is also touched, and that its passengers get rid of the queues at the border and pass passport control at the station of origin (London Saint Pancras, Paris Gare du Nord, Brussels Midi, Rotterdam or Amsterdam Centraal). The service from the English capital to Disneyland will end after the summer, and the flow of foreign tourists to this country – initially covered by the pandemic – has declined significantly. Before it was the starting point of the tour of Europe for many Americans and Japanese, now not so much. Tails, which the British are so good at, are basically not very sexy, and in the rest of the world they are not cool.
In the old days, Hercule Poirot and his fellow travelers would have boarded the Orient Express at Victoria Station, had smoked salmon canapés and a couple of glasses of champagne on the way to Folkestone, before crossing the Channel and changing trains at Calais. , where they would dress for dinner between chandeliers and with a pianist entertaining the evening. But what was given is over. From now on, let each quisqui arrive in Paris however it can.
Incidentally, the North American edition of Agatha Christie's novel was published under the title Murder on the Calais Train. The Calais train has been killed.
